. Mark to Jonathan: We're not robots
. Drama as president collects Tambuwal's speech
Security retained its top position on the budget chart yesterday as President Jonathan presented the 2013 appropriation bill before a joint session of the National Assembly.
The presentation was marked by hostile statements from Senate President David Mark and Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal, both of whom rapped what they called poor budget execution.
Two units of the security sector get a total of N668.56 billion out of the total N4.92 trillion estimates for next year, which Jonathan tagged "Budget of Fiscal Consolidation with Inclusive Growth."
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N348.92 billion is going for Defence and N319.65 has been allocated to the Police, but several other security units were not listed in the highlights given by the President yesterday, meaning the total security budget for 2013 could match last year's N900 billion.
Of the total budget figures, N2.41 trillion is for recurrent expenditure while N1.54 trillion is for capital expenditure.
The other sectoral allocations listed in Jonathan's presentation are Education with the next highest allocation of N426.53 billion, Health gets N297.23 billion, Works gets N183.5 billion, Agriculture and Rural Development has N81.41 billion while Power is given N74.26 billion. The petrol subsidy reinvestment programme will gulp N273.5 billion.
Major key assumptions in the budget are daily crude oil production of 2.53 million barrels and oil price benchmark of $75 dollars per barrel which the House of Representatives has already increased to $80 when it passed the 2012-2013 Medium Term Expenditure Framework on Tuesday.
Projected GDP growth rate is estimated at 6.5 percent.
Jonathan also announced some major fiscal policy decisions, including zero percent import duty on all machinery and spare parts imported for local sugar manufacturing industries. "There will also be five year tax holiday for sugarcane to sugar value chain investors," he added.
Import duty and levy on raw sugar will be increased respectively to 10 percent and 50 percent while refined sugar will attract 20 percent duty and 60 percent levy, Jonathan said.
On rice, he announced a 10 percent import duty and 100 percent levy. Also all commercial aircraft spare parts imported for use in Nigeria will now attract zero percent duty and zero percent VAT in what the President said was an effort to improve safety "in our sky".
Machinery and equipments imported for use in solid mineral sector will now attract zero percent import duty and zero percent VAT.
In the transport sector, the President said there will be zero duty on completely knocked down components for mass transit buses of at least 40 seats capacity.
The President also announced the provision of N16 billion for frontier exploration in order to build up the nation's oil reserves through exploration of new frontiers for oil and gas which he said was beginning to yield result with discovery of oil in the Chad basin, Benue trough and Anambra basin.
The 2013 budget is a "modest increase" of five percent over the N4.7 trillion appropriated for this year, Jonathan said.
Not robots
Shortly before Jonathan's presentation Senate President David Mark made an opening remark, saying the National Assembly must not be considered "a mere mechanical rubber-stamp that must robotically pass budget estimates as presented."
He added: "What the constitution enjoins Mr. President to lay before the National Assembly are mere estimates, not immutable figures. And once the estimates are so laid, their consideration becomes subject to the constitutionally prescribed modes of exercising legislative power."
There was a mild drama in the chamber of the House of Representatives, venue of the budget presentation, when President Jonathan walked up to Tambuwal and personally collected the speaker's speech.
In the speech, which was meant to be a vote of thanks after the president's budget presentation, Tambuwal criticized Jonathan for disregarding parliament resolutions.
"(The) National Assembly is becoming increasingly concerned about the disregard for its resolutions and public comments by certain functionaries of the Executive on same," he said.
"I cite the Senate Resolution on the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the House resolution on the state of insecurity of the nation, requesting Mr. President to visit and brief the House, the House of Representatives resolution on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the concurrent resolution of the two chambers on Bakassi among others. This does not promote cordial relationship between the Executive and Legislature and consequently stability in the polity."
Apparently struck by the bluntness of the speaker, Jonathan walked over to Tambuwal and demanded for the paper containing speech.
At first the speaker declined to hand it over to him promising that he will send it later, according to a lawmaker who was standing near the speaker's seat in the chamber.
But the President insisted on collecting it right there, and at this point Tambuwal handed it over, and Jonathan passed it on to one of his aides.
This was the second time this year Tambuwal was raising concern to Jonathan over disregard of parliament resolutions. The first time was at an event on May 28 when he said the president was shirking his constitutional responsibility to sign bills passed, but Jonathan fired back by saying that the lawmakers have been overreaching the doctrine of separation of powers.
Yesterday, Tambuwal also said, "The vaunted growth in the nation's GDP must be reflected in the lives of everyone, not just a few people privileged to hold public office or those enjoying unfair public patronage."
Daily Trust